Challenges and Solutions in Automated Tongue Diagnosis Techniques: A Review

Tongue diagnosis is used in various traditional medicine cultures as a non-invasive method for assessing an individual's health. Tongue image analysis has the potential for assessing the metabolism and functionality of the internal organs, making it a quick method of diagnosis. As automated systems give quantitative and objective results thereby effective in facilitating diagnosis, a review was conducted to evaluate literature on current methods of tongue diagnosis. Different methods of tongue diagnosis in the literature were identified and compared. Information on automated tongue diagnosis system, such as image acquisition, color correction, segmentation, feature extraction and classification, particularly in traditional medicine were reviewed. The aim of the review was to identify effective image processing techniques to be compatible with automated system for tongue diagnosis using some easily available to all imaging device rather than a dedicated state of art acquisition systems, which may not be easily accessible to general public. All methods identified were either being researched or developed and no specific system was identified that is currently available for routine use in clinics or home monitoring for patients. The healthcare sector could benefit from access to validated and automated tongue diagnosis systems. The feasibility of a mobile enabled platform to intelligently make use of this traditional method of diagnosis should be explored. In order to provide cheap and quick preliminary diagnosis for clinical practice automation of this noninvasive traditional technique can prove to be a boon for health care sector.